Tag: John Hayes

The speech made by John Hayes, the then Education Minister, on 15 November 2011.

Thank you Kirsty [Wark] and good afternoon everyone.

It’s always pleasant when I’m able to begin a speech with congratulations.

I’m sure you’ll all want to join me in congratulating Kirsty Wark on the impressively high levels of skill in the kitchen she displayed recently by reaching the final of the BBC Celebrity Masterchef competition.

That was quite an achievement. The daytime television enthusiasts among you who have seen the show will know that its catchphrase is

“Cooking doesn’t get tougher than this”.

Speaking of great achievements, a second helping of congratulations must go to the UK team that competed at last month’s WorldSkills competition who are here today.

I’m sure most of you know how fiercely competitive WorldSkills is. Yet our team, over half of whom were apprentices or former apprentices, won 5 Gold medals, 2 silvers, and 6 bronzes, plus 12 Medallions for Excellence. That placed us 5th out of 51in the competition, ahead of Germany, France, our best-ever finish.

One of our gold medals was for cookery.

And I can say with all due deference to Kirsty that cooking really doesn’t get tougher than that.

If the members of the team would like to stand up. I’m sure that everyone here would like to take a closer look at the best of the best our skills system can produce and people who represent the level of achievement to which all our learners should be able to aspire.

And I’m sure we’d all like to show them our appreciation.

Given the fall from the state of grace with which we’ve all been struggling almost since the beginning of time, I understand why few human beings see as many reasons to be cheerful as I do.

But we can all be cheerful about the progress the further education sector has made; is making. Progress through the changes we’ve made since coming to Government.

It’s good to remember just how much needed to change.

For how long FE was neglected.

It’s easy to forget just how far we’ve travelled together over the last 18 months.

Just how many petty restrictions we have swept away,

Just how many pointless quangos are no longer around to interfere with your work.

And just how many more apprentices are there gaining the skills and experience upon which they can build good careers and fulfilled lives?

By the way, anyone who has still to be convinced of the importance of Apprenticeships could do worse than read the Institute for Public Policy Research’s new pamphlet Rethinking Apprenticeships, which is being published today and to which Vince Cable, Martin Doel and I all have contributed.

There is always more we can do. But a record 442,700 apprenticeships starts is an achievement of which you can be proud and the Government can be proud too.

Last year, when I spoke to you, I set out our vision of a free sector supporting growth and social renewal.

Today I want to describe not only the journey we have been on together since then. But also the next steps.

Of course, I know that in the FE sector new beginnings have never been in short supply. Over the last 10 years we’ve had

Four skills strategies, two FE strategies and the Leitch Review.

Three Acts of Parliament, the old LSC agenda for change.

And countless Secretaries of State, and even more FE Ministers.

I hope you agree that since we came to power the message has been clear. And it’s not all down to me, despite the compliments from the Secretary of State for Education; he deserves so much credit for all he is doing. FE – no longer the neglected middle child between schools and HE, but the prodigal son.

And the strategy I formed with you, for you, at the outset holds firm.

Because the simple truth at its heart holds true; it is this: If we want skills provision sufficiently responsive to meet dynamic economic and social needs, power must rest in your hands.

In framing our plans, having listened to you over the years, I had no doubt about your capacity to respond to the most radical change in the assumptions about FE in recent years.

This is systemic change. A paradigm shift; a sector that moves quickly.

I am so proud of what you have achieved. Thank you.

I am especially pleased with the way you have delivered on apprenticeships – the biggest growth in apprenticeship numbers ever. There are now 267,200 apprenticeship starts for 16-24 year olds; and 175,500 for 25+.

That’s growing the skills of our workforce by building people’s prospects.

This summer, we gave you yet another document. New Challenges, New Chances. It cements the strategy by responding again to what you have said.

Following the consultation to which so many of you responded – and thank again you for that – we’re now on the verge of another package of reforms.

But never again a signpost to a future that will never happen.

I can’t anticipate the changes and challenges that will face our successors when our time is done, but I know that by building our strategy on time honoured principles we’ll be fit to face the journey to the future.

A future of lives changed for the better because of the difference your work makes.

Now “we have longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life. “

My direction of travel has been plotted on the roadmap you can help to draw. We have not only sought your views at every stage, we have taken them seriously.

That is because only you can ensure that the sector’s teaching and learning is what’s right; what is needed.

I’ll do all I can to see that you get the funding you need, but each of you, all of you are uniquely sighted about how best to spend it to meet the needs of your local areas.

My view matters, but I’m certain yours matter more.

I want to abolish as much uncertainty for FE as I can.

So the New Challenges, New Chances reforms will be designed to help you plan for years – at least until the end of this Parliament – and to do so the ephemera of spin and soft soap must be washed away, replaced by a cleansing long term vision.

No different strategy on my watch. This plan will last.

And I can assure you that these plans will not be a lurch in an entirely new direction. On the contrary, they will follow the direction of travel that Skills for Sustainable Growth set a year ago and to which you contributed so much.

I want to talk mainly about that perspective during the rest of my time today.

About the new relationship between colleges, our economy, and the kind of civil society the coming generations deserve.

A relationship in which colleges will be trusted not only to manage their own affairs, but to play a key part in designing the whole framework within which they operate.

A new relationship that challenges all of us, but which is fundamentally true to the legacy of the founders of adult education in England.

I believe, like them, that further education should exist for the benefit of local people and their communities.

And that it should feed the local economies that sustain them.

Crucially – that it should help ensure that every parent’s wish comes true; that their children enjoy the best chances and better prospects that earlier generations enjoyed,

My vision is a sector freed from Governments that predict and provide. Free to reflect and respond to what it sees around it.

What do you see from the window of the principal’s office?

Does it make you cry out, like Miranda,

“O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world that has such people in it!”?

Shops, offices, factories, open or closed.

Groups of mainly young people talking or speaking into mobiles.

People on foot, in cars or on buses going about their business.

Your communities. Your people.

But I’ll tell you what you don’t see.

You don’t see me. Though I do know that some of you have my photo on your desks (some even on bedside tables or in wallets, I am told) and that’s perfectly understandable.

You don’t see Vince Cable’s nor Michael Gove’s. (no photos in wallets there)

Not Geoff Russell’s face nor Simon Waugh’s nor Sir Michael Wilshaw’s.

What you see is where your interest lies, where your passion for learning lives.

People write and talk a lot about localism but a lot less about what it ought to mean.

Localism is being aware of your community’s needs, sensitive to its roots, careful about its future; feeling for the people around you, their prospects and their welfare, knowing that your fulfilment is bound to their well being; understanding that we are all part of an organic whole, each of us stronger because the whole is stronger.

Each of our endeavours, achievements nurturing the common good.

You are stronger for me not telling you how to relate to the people you serve.

The past tendency in parts of Government was to see running an FE college like running a sweet shop – that is finally at an end. I know what you do – run multi-million pound organisations, which, in business terms, are large employers.

I know that what it takes to be a successful college leader is not so different from what it takes to run any successful business and retain the support of your board of directors while drawing on their expertise.

College governors are typically busy successful people.

So why ask them to give up their time unless we actually allow them to govern?

You are shaping the skills Britain needs to prosper.

Key to the future of your communities, colleges can help to fashion Britain’s future.

And so we must have the courage to set you free to do so.

I don’t want the sector to be rule-bound. I want you to establish best practice yourself through collective action like this week’s publication of the Foundation Code of Governance.

That process of liberation began when I spoke at City & Islington College 18 month ago and continued with Skills for Sustainable Growth last November.

The outcome of our New Challenges, New Chances consultation will map how much further we will travel by the end of this Parliament.

But I can give you just a taste of what’s to come.

First, it’s clear that you must have the ability to innovate to meet new demands.

Margaret Sharp and her colleagues have stressed the need for an innovative code. And I thank Margaret for her presentation this morning and for the work she has led in producing the Colleges in the Communities report. I think we’re only just beginning to understand quite how important this work and its follow-up will be.

So I will ask my officials to organise with the AoC a series of workshops to put into practice Margaret’s proposals.

Second, we must allow you to accelerate the speed of change.

We can’t afford to prevaricate when employers have needs and there are unemployed adults ready to meet them, its no use waiting for the system to catch up. You need to get started with twin track qualifications and I’m pleased to tell you that Geoff Russell has found an easy way to do it – funding new start-up programmes through a simple mechanism.

We will bring forward further plans to make real the changes heralded by Education Bill. That means more deregulation more quickly.

Geoff may say more on that when he speaks to you on Wednesday.

Third, there are over 2.5m people unemployed – a million of them young people – in this country at present. So I have also asked Geoff to use the normal process of reallocating funding to good performers, funding for those NEETs most in need.

And because of the urgency of this issue we are making up to £25 million available this academic year to increase capacity to improve the skills and employment prospects of the most disengaged young people using the in-year flexibilities in the skills funding system.

Fourth, all organisations need stability in order to plan, to innovate and to build relationships. That is why I will continue to argue for colleges to be given three-year budgets, including for capital, of the sort that universities have enjoyed for decades.

Fifth, I want our changes to HE to have colleges at their heart. We will deliver more higher education in colleges – the 20,000 places is a beginning, not an end.

And we will redefine higher learning through the accelerated development of level 4 and 5 apprenticeship frameworks. I will shortly announce the first round successful bids for funding for this step change.

Sixth, on apprenticeships: we will make the growth in numbers sustainable by further cuts in bureaucracy; by marketing apprenticeships to businesses that don’t yet enjoy their benefit with fresh verve and vehemence; a renewed emphasis on quality; and ensuring good fit between welfare reform and our skills offer

Seventh, to ensure that our teachers are the best in the world and have access to HE I can announce today that we will introduce a bursary for initial teacher training.

Eighth, because Further Education must think increasingly broadly, looking to international opportunities I’ve asked the AoC to develop, with my department, a global strategy for FE.

And finally, I can confirm that an independent review of professionalism in FE will be undertaken by David Sherlock CBE and Dawn Ward OBE, Burton and South Derbyshire College.

The Government can do much to empower the learner and we are doing so, through things like the new National Careers Service, Lifelong Learning Accounts and good information on where jobs will be in the future – linking advice to opportunities and growth.

Another sort of empowerment is recognising a shared responsibility for supporting learning; the Government providing core financial support, some individuals paying fees supported by loans and employers contributing so supporting learning too.

But the essential relationship remains that between learner or employer and provider.

Because first-class programmes of learning; quality of teaching; and students growing by gaining new skills. These are at the beating heart of further education.

Some cynics claim that me declining to tell you what to do and how to do it will lead to chaos. They say you’re not ready for freedom. That by me trusting you “mere anarchy is loosed upon the world”

I prefer another of Yeats’ memorable phrases, “a terrible beauty is born”. The beauty I envisage of is the beauty of imagination; the beauty of creative minds. And its only terror is the thrill of new.

Some critics call me an old-fashioned Tory. And they are right.

My approach is rooted in the Toryism of Wilberforce and Shaftesbury of Randolf Churchill and Rab Butler.

My approach to your sector, our sector, certainly echoes the approach of my party when Disraeli, said that

“all power is a trust; that we are accountable for its exercise; that from the people and for the people all springs, and all must exist.”

The changes we propose – and will publish by the end of the month – are a radical shift of power, from me to you.

But I want to make clear that I am and will remain accountable to Parliament – to the elected representatives of the people you serve- for the justness of your decisions, the excellence of your leadership; and the quality of your services.

And after serving the people of my constituency, I see that as the greatest honour of my political life.

Thank you for that.

Thank you for coming with us on this journey.

And thank you for all you do, for all those whose lives you touch.

Further Education – once described as the neglected middle child of our education system – now favoured.

Favoured by me; by the Government of which I am part.

Further education grown tall. Grown strong. At last, treated as a grown up.

Favoured Sons and Daughters, Further Education has come of age.

The speech made by John Hayes, the then Education Minister, at the Thistle Hotel in Brighton on 3 November 2011.

Good morning everyone.

I am very pleased to be here today in one of our most fashionable, creative and enterprising cities. Given that fashion is about here and now and I’m more interested in then and when, it is the other two adjectives – creative and enterprising – which are my main themes for today.

The National Careers Service will be launched next April, and builds on Next Step, introduced last Summer, which has been and continues to be a vital and successful Government service. Next Step has the capacity to provide guidance to 700,000 adults a year, and can handle up to 1 million telephone guidance sessions and 20 million website sessions. And over 80% of adults receiving guidance say that it influences their decision to learn or move on in employment.

These are impressive figures. They are testament to the achievements of the careers sector, and the respect in which careers guidance is held by those who have benefitted from it. And Next Step is a landmark service, streets ahead of the provision for adults we have seen in the past. Establishing a fully integrated careers service for adults was my ambition in opposition, delivered in Government.

Now as we plan the launch of the National Careers Service we approach a moment of immense significance. It marks the point at which the careers sector will step into the sunlight. It is the start of your renaissance.

And to do that, the sector needs to be both creative and enterprising, just as the City of Brighton and Hove has been. From the prescribing of seawater in the 1740s to its current epithet of “Silicon Beach”, Brighton has flourished.

Change is always a challenge, and for some people too hard to face. Perhaps that’s why we’ve heard too much talk of a “golden age” in careers guidance which is at risk. I don’t want you to have any illusions that the past was better than the future. Although the Connexions service had an impact on the lives of many young people, it was a model that simply did not work.

Giving professional careers guidance is a specialism, which requires expertise and experience. The Connexions model stretched professional careers advisers to breaking point, requiring of them that they give expert advice on health, housing, personal finance and other matters.

This was ineffective, and ultimately destructive: the product of a public service strategy which asked professionals to do everything at once, rather than doing what they know best.

This was not the right model for professional careers guidance, and it will not be the model for the future.

The launch of the National Careers Service brings a clear focus on professional, independent guidance which springs from a deep knowledge of the labour market and the specialist skills and experience of the careers adviser. Empirical, up to date, and to the point. That is what you have all called for, and that is exactly what will be delivered.

But it depends on the commitment of every single person in this room; every professional in the sector; everyone like us who has a passion for careers guidance.

I am sensitive to the scale of the challenge you face and know just how radical our ambitions are. But I want us to move on and up, and take bold strides forward. Yes,economic circumstances are difficult. But that must be a spur, an inspiration to even greater creativity, drive and ambition. As I said in Belfast, we simply have to do more with less; and that will be the project and the glory of the careers profession.

I am passionate about guidance. It can set young people upon a path which will inspire and motivate them at every turn. It can help adults who have fallen on hard times turn around their lives. It deserves the highest and widest public recognition, and the prestige of a profession which is respected and admired.

You have a chance, a golden chance, to turn your passion for guidance into a reinvigoration of the sector’s aims and ambitions. But we must move with the times. The model of the past is not the model of the future, and I want you to develop, to innovate, to reinvent where you need to reinvent, and to rise to the challenge.

As I have said before, guidance is “the stuff of dreams”, because it clarifies and inspires. As Ruskin put it, “To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion, all in one.”

The National Careers Service will bring online and helpline services for young people and adults together in one place. It will be required to hold the new, more rigorous matrix standard which I had the pleasure to launch earlier this month. It will have a redesigned website which makes information about careers and the labour market more accessible. It will provide high quality advice and guidance to adults in community locations. And it will be promoted at a national level, so that its profile and visibility are high.

I want the National Careers Service to be the gold standard in careers guidance. It will not manage the market – the Government’s approach is to remove regulation, not increase it. But it will set a standard of quality and professionalism that all providers of guidance should seek to match.

Alongside that, the Careers Profession Alliance is leading the renaissance of the guidance profession. Following the great work of the Careers Profession Task Force, the Alliance has set itself the target of achieving chartered status for the careers profession inside three years.

I was delighted to share a platform today with Ruth Spellman, who is chair of the Alliance. This is not by chance, but by design. I want to stand shoulder to shoulder with the careers profession as it continues its journey, and I was pleased that Ruth spoke with authority about the steps which need to be taken.

I applaud the ambition the Alliance have shown, and strongly support the work that Ruth and her colleagues are leading. Developing a set of professional standards which are respected and aspired to by all those providing careers advice – wherever they work and to whatever professional body they belong – is an undertaking of the utmost importance; and I urge all the parties involved onwards to success.

I support the work on developing Higher Apprenticeships as a route for the professions, and I am sympathetic with the view that a quota of level 6 staff should be the aim. So the building blocks are in place. And we are working to a clear strategy, which will not change.

The participation age for education and training will be raised to 18 in 2015. In line with that flagship policy, responsibility for careers guidance for young people will be devolved to the institutions of learning which know them best, and local authorities will be expected to work hard to re-engage those who have disengaged with the system. Schools will work with local authorities to identify young people who are at risk.

The National Careers Service will provide information, advice and guidance which supports growth and social mobility, and is in tune with the labour market. Its advisers will be expert, and its reputation will be second to none.

And underpinning this, the careers profession – and the market in high quality careers services – will continue to grow.

We must continue to look for new and better ways of measuring and recording the positive outcomes to which guidance can lead. Government will play its part in seeking new sources of evidence; but we will continue to be challenged to justify every penny we spend, and the best evidence of success is that which you yourselves provide.

The Alliance, its constituent bodies, and every organisation and adviser in the sector, will need to champion the quality of professional standards to which guidance is delivered, so that there is demand for professional services.

And everyone whose business it is to engage in this noble profession – not just the National Careers Service – will need to look for the opportunities and openings which allow them to demonstrate their skill and commitment.

I know there has been debate about the importance of face to face careers guidance for young people.

I share the view that face to face guidance is of critical importance. Pupils and students can benefit enormously from support offered in person, which raises their aspirations and guides them onto a successful path.

This is particularly true of those young people who do not have the social networks which can connect them to inspiring figures in different occupations; or those who come from families with a long history of unemployment; or those with learning difficulties or disabilities. You will have heard me speak before about the importance of wherewithal: many young people do not lack aspiration, but do lack the means to achieve their goals. Face to face guidance can help to move them onto the right path. This is the difference between information and advice, between data and understanding. It was Eliot after all who said “where is the knowledge lost in information.”

Many of you have stressed the importance of ensuring that schools are able to draw on careers guidance of the highest quality. I share that view. My friends in the teaching profession have left me in no doubt that headteachers are ready to respond to the new duty to secure independent, impartial careers guidance. But they have called for support to help them take advantage of opportunity, and help others do the same.

So today I am pleased to report that my right honourable friend Lord Hill of Oareford told the House of Lords last week that Government will bring forward statutory guidance for schools on the new legal duty. He also said that this statutory guidance will highlight to schools how they can be confident that the external support they are buying in is of the desired quality; and that the Government would consult on the guidance.

Lord Hill also confirmed that the Government will place a clear expectation on schools that they should secure face-to-face careers guidance where it is the most suitable support, in particular for disadvantaged children, those who have special needs and those with learning difficulties or disabilities.

These important messages in statutory guidance will be underpinned by the sharing of effective practice and evidence of what works. Headteachers need to be able to spread the word about the best, most innovative and most cost effective providers of guidance.

And we will not stop there. The matrix standard embodies the quality I expect of all careers guidance services. As a visible national standard, it will be promoted, and should serve to help schools decide what careers guidance to secure.

And providers in the National Careers Service will be encouraged to market their services to schools. This will provide an additional stimulus for the market in young people’s guidance to respond.

Let me reiterate. We are moving from a past in which specialist, professional careers guidance was submerged by a model which did not work, to a future in which high quality, dynamic and responsive careers services will flourish.

We can create a long term environment for guidance which endures. But the sector needs to seize its opportunity.

And in Government, we will not rest on our laurels. On the contrary, we will continue to increase the reach and visibility of careers guidance.

We will encourage careers guidance providers in the community to establish networks with other public, private and voluntary sector services. Specialist services working in partnership can have a huge impact on outcomes for individual people. So I want to build on the level of co-location which the Next Step service has already developed.

I can confirm today that the number of Further Education colleges working with Next Step has now reached 139. Some, such as Southgate College, are exploring new models which bring together careers and job support. Here, in Brighton, Next Step South East is co-located with City College and the Whitehawk Inn community centre to deliver both support and training. We will work with the Association of Colleges, Jobcentre Plus and others to further develop those models. Following our launch in the spring, my ambition is for co-location with Job Centre Plus and colleges to exceed 250 sites across the UK by the end of next year. I can also announce that from April 2012, we will pilot new forms of co-location for the National Careers Service, including in places of worship, community centres, the charitable and voluntary sectors.

We will help providers in the service to expand their share of business in the market, so they can take the quality of the National Careers Service offer out as widely as possible, and I want to explore how a peripatetic service can be put in place to serve rural areas like the one I represent. The National Careers Service – in towns, cities and villages across the UK.

And we will continue to explore how we make best use of available funding to support Growth and Social Mobility – for example, by reviewing the groups which are eligible for more than one session of face to face support.

The National Careers Service will be at the heart of the system. To play its role as part of the vision I have set out, it will need inspirational leadership, and a hotline to the profession. So I can announce today:

that we will establish a National Council for Careers made up of key figures from the profession, to advise on the management and direction of the service as it continues to develop;

and that in the New Year, we will publish a document confirming the policy and direction for careers guidance, which will reinforce everything I have said today.

In Belfast, I issued a challenge, and called on you all to respond. My message has not changed. Indeed, it has got stronger, my conviction still more certain.

This is the careers profession’s time. This is a renaissance. I love the past but I am not its captive. It will not take us forward.

Everyone in this room, everyone out there in the sector is committed to inspiring and guiding the young people and adults of this country. We need to step up to the mark, as will the Government . In Kipling’s words “Gardens are not made by sitting in the shade.” We must continue the journey, and move into the bright sunshine. Moving forward, not holding back. Aiming high, not for ourselves, but for the lives we change through what we are and what we do.

Thank you for listening.

The speech made by John Hayes, the then Education Minister, at the CBI in London on 6 September 2011.

Good morning everyone.

Most of us might think of this time of year as one of endings rather than beginnings. With the nights starting to draw in and a cold nip in the morning air, summer holidays are over and harvest-time is upon us. Whether or not they amount to mellow fruitfulness, the temptation is for us all to sit back and admire the results of the work we did earlier in the year.

But as we stand on the threshold of autumn, we should remember that this can be a time of important beginnings as well as endings. My children, like millions of others, returned to a new year at school yesterday. Take today, 6 September, for example. William the Conqueror landed in England and set in motion amongst the most profound social and political changes that this country has ever seen. Nearly six centuries later, this was also the day on which the Mayflower set sail for America, not just starting the rise of a new superpower, which in crucial ways sowed the seeds of the modern business environment in which most of you operate.

And what we do in the future can be as glorious as all the best of what we’ve done in the past. So I want to speak today of a future which is better for Britain because it’s better for business. Specifically, I’d like to share some thoughts with you about the steps we are hoping to take with you to spread the social and economic benefits of Apprenticeships even more widely.

That’s not merely a technical issue – it’s about investing in human capital.

Anyone who has seen for themselves just what an Apprenticeship can do to turn someone’s life around, knows the power of that investment, whether the apprentice is an adult looking for a new direction or a young person just starting out. Power not only to give them new skill, fresh hope and undreamt-of earning potential, but even more importantly power to give new pride in new abilities, people with a constructive purpose in life, real self-respect reinforced by the respect of those around them.

You know that, our Government is facing two profound domestic policy challenges. First, promoting renewed economic growth and prosperity for British businesses. And second, giving renewed hope and purpose to British people, especially the young, whose disaffection with things as they are was shown so graphically recently.

Building an Apprenticeships programme that delivers to its maximum potential is highly relevant to increasing the chances of meeting both challenges successfully.

And it’s highly relevant to you. Some businesspeople say that they’re reluctant to become involved in training because it’s easier to just go out and buy the skills they need to grow and to thrive, if necessary by looking abroad. But that’s a short term fix not a long term solution to Britain’s skills shortages.

I appreciate that many of you already engage apprentices in large numbers as well as offering training to your existing staff. You know already what they can do for your businesses’ performance and for their standing within the community, you value the difference skills make to productivity and competitiveness. I know, too, that many of you have been powerful advocates of training among other businesses in your own sectors. And I want to pay public tribute to that this morning.

Your efforts have played their part in allowing us to offer at least 250,000 more Apprenticeships over this Parliament than the previous Government had planned. Thank you.

But with nearly one million young people not in education, employment or training, I think it’s obvious that we haven’t yet done enough.

Too often in the recent past, businesses have been asked to collude in Government numbers games. Getting more so-called NEETs off the unemployment register by setting arbitrary targets and creating schemes just to meet them is just not right.

We must also make progress in increasing the range of Apprenticeships, and improving their quality. Their reach must become as wide as the scope of learners’ abilities and aspirations. Their quality must be such as to make the apprentice sought after by employers, envied by their peers and admired by the rest of us.
That necessitates, among other things, for creative thinking and for expanding our own perceptions of what Apprenticeships are.

They certainly remain highly valuable for traditional crafts. The special quality of the interface between an apprentice and his mentor, the vital symbiosis, can inspire both; between one generation eager to pass on all it knows and the next ready to learn. Too rarely are, these days, generations brought together in that way. But the potential for knowledge to be passed on from one generation to another, and for them to find common cause as craftsmen, goes far beyond a particular discipline.

I said last year that craft is as much about learning to be a film technician as furniture maker; as much about learning to be a fashion designer as a fishmonger. I did not have Pinewood Studios in mind when I said that, but I’m still glad that you will hear from them later on about how they have brought together a network of small employers in their supply chain to deliver successful Apprenticeships.

This variant on the Group Training Associations theme, with small employers working with a large totemic employer, is something that is worthy of further consideration. Its very nature generates cross-Sector Skills Council working and a sector-led approach to generate growth. This is something that I obviously welcome and about which I have been talking to the UK Commission for Employment and Skills.

A second key area where we must make progress, one that I think will strike a particular chord here. The Government said in its response to the Wolf Review in May that we were committed to simplifying Apprenticeships, in order to remove unnecessary bureaucracy and make them less onerous for employers to offer.

And I, for one, see no contradiction between our wish to raise quality and our commitment to cut red tape. That’s why we have started a specific project looking further at how we can facilitate greater engagement with small and medium-sized enterprises in skills, training, and Apprenticeships. That project will report to me this Autumn.

But I also recognise that reducing bureaucracy and burdens for large employers is not easy. Tinkering would not be the answer. It had – as some of you may recall – been tried before and had made little difference. Instead, we needed to start from some robust analysis of the systems and burdens imposed on large employers to allow us to step back and think about the way the system operates as a whole.

What we do must be evidentially based.

Which is why I was so delighted to give my full support to a commission by the Employer Reference Group, in which the CBI and many large employers played an important part. The commission’s aim was to review the processes faced by large employers seeking to take on apprentices and the result of its work is the excellent report being published today. This sets out in detail the processes involved in taking on apprentices and how bureaucracy can be reduced for large employers who contract directly with the Skill Funding Agency.

The report has been co-sponsored by two of the Employer Reference Group members – BT and TUI Travel, and I am delighted that Andy Palmer from BT will speak to you in a moment. The study and the report were produced by the Learning and Skills Improvement Service – LSIS – who are also here today.

The report has made a series of broad recommendations to simplify the system and help encourage more large employers to recruit apprentices. Naturally, we were reluctant to wait for publication of the report before taking action, and I have here an Action Plan that we are implementing to take forward the report’s recommendations.

One key measure suggested by employers – that we look at paying large employers by outcomes only, thus stripping away a significant number of data collection and audit burdens – has, I am delighted to say, started this month with a pilot of over 20 major employers.

But we will go further:

Providing an online, plain-English, toolkit for employers that clearly explains the end-to-end processes employers need to undertake for apprenticeships;
Streamlining contracting arrangements;
A commitment to no “in year” changes to contracting arrangements;
A more proportionate approach to audit and inspection – reducing preparation time for employers;
Greater use of electronic information, thus reducing paperwork;
A more streamlined certification process.
Progress against this Action Plan will be monitored via a Task and Finish Group of employers being set up by the National Apprenticeship Service, with the Skills Funding Agency. This group will not only keep me informed of progress and the impact that the changes are having but will also report regularly to the Employer Reference Group. And I will insist on 6 month and 12 month progress reports tested against the views on major employers, the CBI and other key players. I know that many of you, too, will also be keen to see how this work is progressing.

It remains only for me to thank the CBI, for their hospitality this morning, their championing of Apprenticeships in general, and the work they, and all the employer members of the Reference Group, especially Andy Palmer from BT and Andy Smyth from TUI Travel, have done to support this study and the resulting report and action plan.

Apprenticeships: time honoured, but right for now.

Right for business because they boost productivity.

Right for those that gain the skills to prosper.

Right for Britain because by fuelling economic growth and fostering the common good they feed our national interest.

The speech made by John Hayes, the then Education Minister, in Thame, Oxfordshire on 7 July 2011.

The speech made by John Hayes, the then Education Minister, at Warwickshire College, Rugby on 15 June 2011.

Introduction

Good morning everyone.

I am going to speak today about the future of FE and I wanted the first people with whom I shared my thoughts to be some of those who know the sector best, care about it most and, critically, who will play a key role in delivering a new future for FE that is characterised by innovation, vocational excellence and a renewed sense of enthusiasm for and pride in skills.

Many of you say that I am something of a tribune for our FE sector, in public, in Parliament and within Government. My commitment isn’t based on sentiment, although we should never be apologetic about the beauty of craft and the elegance of learning. The case for practical learning is far from merely utilitarian. Nevertheless, a hard-headed analysis proves how fundamental high-quality adult learning and skills are to achieving many of the key objectives of the coalition’s programme for government.

Take, for example, our highest priority, the task of restoring economic growth.

Higher skills bring higher productivity. But they also allow businesses to become more efficient and more innovative.

In the rebalanced global economy, productivity, efficiency and innovation will be key to this country’s continued ability to be competitive. That applies not just to international markets, but in our domestic economy, too.

New economic powers like India, China and Brazil are looking to increase their exports, and they will cater to our home market’s demands if British producers don’t because they can’t. Of course, the growing strength of countries like these isn’t an accident. It is based on years of focused investment, including in education and skills.

People often speak of our economy in isolation, as if it were separate from the rest of our national life. Of course it isn’t. Growth coupled with a skilled workforce creates jobs, which in turn spread prosperity and spending-power. But even in an environment in which new jobs are being created – which they currently are, as a matter of fact – lack of the right skills still leaves people excluded.

There are currently nearly a million young people not in education, employment or training. A further 80,000 people are locked up in our gaols. Targeted skills provision is at the heart of the Government’s strategies for getting people out of inactivity or out of the pernicious cycle of offending and reoffending and offering them productive lives.

It follows from everything I’ve said so far that skills are also a powerful force in achieving progressive social aims. High skills have always been an enabler of social mobility. But even more importantly, we know that gaining and using skills gives individuals and their families a stronger sense of purpose and pride in their own achievements. It’s also clear that learning, including perhaps in its more informal settings, strengthens communities by helping to bring people together and encouraging active citizenship.

The public health benefits of learning and its positive effects on reducing anti-social behaviour are well documented. The stronger our adult learning and skills system, the healthier and happier as a nation we are likely to become because achievement feeds contentment which in turn nourishes the common good.

The challenges

This vision of a stronger society based on an appreciation of what learning and skills can do poses great challenges. The Government set out its approach to meeting them last November in Skills for Sustainable Growth. But the skills revolution we seek and the benefits we look to it to bring cannot be led from above. It needs the active involvement of you and your learners as well.

Let’s start with individual learners.

I remember early last year seeing a young unemployed woman being interviewed on the BBC. She had been directed to one course after another and passed them all. But they had led to nowhere; certainly no closer to a job, because they were the wrong courses.

How disappointing to have left her disenchanted about the value of learning and disillusioned about how much control she had over her destiny.

Learners deserve to grasp the relationship between the skills they acquire and the outcomes they can gain in terms of work, social skills and social progress. So, learning needs not only to be “accessible”- in the sense of learners being able to participate in it; but “explicable” – in terms of individuals understanding the different impacts that different types of learning can have on their lives.

Empowerment does not simply amount to giving people the right to choose. They must also be equipped with the information they need to make an informed choice. That is why, among other things, we are radically reforming and restructuring careers guidance services, which is something about which we will say more tomorrow.

We must empower people to gauge the likely impact of learning for them before they begin it and to make informed choices on that basis. That means putting aside the last Government’s pre-occupation with inputs – on measuring things like how many people train – and instead concentrating on the outcomes of training for those trained.

If we want it to be valued, learning must be seen to deliver on its promises.

And if it does, we can renew shared public appreciation of the value of skills.

There are challenges, too, for employers.

There is no point continuing, as we have all done for years, listening passively to employers’ complaints when the skills system fails to meet their needs. We must challenge them by giving them the power to do something about it.

But first, they must understand the importance of skills to their businesses, and then what their businesses’ specific skills needs are. Over and above this, more businesses must do what many do now; develop a willingness to engage more closely with their staff – Unionlearn is one good vehicle for that – and businesses and skills providers must be closer than ever.

The model for this sort of close, three-way partnership is the Apprenticeships programme. That’s an important reason for the Government’s unprecedented commitment to it. We will create more apprenticeships in our nation than we’ve ever had in our history.

The Government is continuing to make a substantial investment in adult FE and skills, but we also need to rebalance investment, with the costs of training being shared between employers, individuals and the state. We need employers to “own” training programmes, to put their stamp on the skills brand, curriculum and content.

We are already beginning to see more employer sponsorship of workshops, academies and zoning of teaching blocks – this is an excellent start but we must do more.

The final set of challenges will fall to you, the FE sector. You are the experts on how to train people. But you, too, must become more open to the views of learners and employers about how you could do that differently – better.

You must think about the special strengths that each of your institutions has, and how to build on them, providing specialist, vocationally-focused offers that are unique and distinctive.

Distinctive in focusing on the training needs of individual sectors and being highly visible to your employer communities. Distinctive in making your offer different from that of other providers, so that there is diversity and choice for employers and learners.

Britain’s 21st century demands a rainbow of provision, not monotone grey uniformity. We demand scope for individuality, not collectivisation. A limited palette won’t allow us to paint the sharply focused, specialised employer-led provision that we need. Nor is uniformity likely to foster the type of relationship that must exist between employers and employees in individual sectors and their professional counterparts within and across colleges and providers. Learners, employers, lecturers and trainers are united by their shared interest in specific areas of vocational skills and this must be recognised in the way learning is organised and delivered, and how colleges and training organisations promote themselves to local communities.

Our reform agenda also means we need to look again at the approach to addressing poor delivery. We need to take decisive action so that when minimum levels of performance go unmet, other providers, new and existing, can replace inadequate provision.

So, for example, where a college is wholly failing, there has been a tendency in the sector to assume that merging it with another college is invariably the best option. We need to be more creative, including looking at potential new providers and new delivery models, including opening up opportunities for high-quality deliverers from the independent sector. An ever-smaller number of ever-larger and more similar institutions is not going to meet that demand in FE any more than it is in schools or higher education. I am not saying that mergers should never happen, but there needs to be a wide variety of approaches if we are to achieve a revitalised and dynamic system.

We want to work with you to refine our approach so that change is catalysed, not by failure, but by innovation.

We are giving the sector more freedom and flexibility to deliver the learning and skills their local communities want, and in return I expect you to transform the look and content of your provision.

I want you to step up, to take advantage of the freedoms, and think laterally and creatively about the offer you provide. For me responsiveness is the baseline: innovation is our aim.

My vision is of a revitalised, reborn FE sector which is more responsive to the changing needs of a dynamic economy. It will involve greater choice and a market opened up to a range of high quality and more diverse set of providers. It will encompass a wide ranging and evolving set of colleges and training organisations who can respond quickly to meet specific, specialist and/or localised demand as needs alter.

Meeting the challenges

In the past year, much has been done to create the conditions in which these challenges can be met.

We have freed you from a whole raft of pointless rules and regulations and are removing more.

Government off your back and on your side.

We have announced funding which will deliver at least 250,000 more Apprenticeships by the end of this Parliament than the previous Government planned.

We have protected funding for Informal Adult and Community Learning, whilst focusing on those who most need it.

We are developing co-funding and loans for adult learners to achieve the rebalancing of public and employer or individual investment.

At the same time, we have protected funding to help our lowest-skilled people, prioritising young adults who don’t have qualifications when they leave school and improving the quality of training for those without literacy and numeracy.

We are working towards creating an independent, highly professional, impartial careers service that will ensure that people have the right information at the right time to make the right choices.

And we are working with employers and expert bodies to encourage the development of new industry-led professional standards schemes and ensure the suite of qualifications is valued and of high quality.

But I believe there is more to do and scope for new thinking.

Though further education is time-honoured – for craft is rooted in our history – Apprenticeships pre-date degrees. As C S Lewis observed, “you are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream”.

And this is not a Government like the last one, satisfied because it identified problems, concocted plans, restricted, regulated and repeatedly rebadged. Our strategy, Skills for Sustainable Growth is the start of a journey. We must, we will, maintain and increase the momentum we have created.

So I want to hear your views on how we might develop our strategies further, demonstrating more clearly than ever the FE and skills system’s contribution to economic growth and social renewal, to individual opportunity and collective wellbeing.

So let me share with you just some of the areas where there still remains significant work to do.

There is much more to do on Apprenticeships, in particular in terms of making the system more straightforward, developing better access arrangements into an Apprenticeship for people with low skills, and also doing more to develop higher Apprenticeships at the higher end of the skills scale.

There is important work to do in developing learner support arrangements, particularly introducing Lifelong Learning Accounts and tuition fee loans for adult learners. This is something on which we will be consulting very shortly.

We have promised to review informal adult and community learning in order to ensure that we get maximum value from what I regard as the jewel in the learning crown going ahead. Here, too, a consultation exercise is pending.

As most of you know, we have been discussing with the sector further ways in which to make your relationship with the Government and our agencies less onerous. They include introducing a single budget for colleges and streamlining monitoring and performance management arrangements.

But perhaps most of all we should give thought to how to extend the beneficial influence of FE and skills providers across our education system, our economy and our society.

FE is at the heart of learning for the common good.

To be all we can be, we must ensure that that the landscape is revitalised and dynamic, where colleges and training organisations are constantly asking ‘can we do this better?’ There is no single prescription or ‘silver bullet’ – the structures that providers choose to adopt will vary according to their particular offer, itself shaped by demand. To excel we must dare to be different.

Future developments might include skills centres where colleges and individual providers come together to provide specialist, niche or new skills areas. Or Community Interest Companies set up to progress business or activity for the community’s benefit.

Or other types of partnership involving employers through National Skills Academies – ranging from centres of excellence based at existing colleges or training providers, to new stand-alone centres developed to meet changing markets, to networks of partners delivering learning through on-line provision.

Or through colleges and training organisations engaged with Group Training Associations and similar models that can help SMEs access training advice and aggregate demand so that local training provision can be adapted.

There is also scope to build on the model of University Technical Colleges or Technical Academies for 14-19 that I envisage, where the employer, the FE college and the associated university come together to prepare students for progression to higher education.

We can also strengthen and develop FE’s already-significant role in providing higher education itself. And I have no doubt that the forthcoming Higher Education White Paper will suggest further ways to strengthen the sector’s contribution both in helping people progress into higher education and in delivering higher education courses in their communities.

Demand side dynamism depends on supply side diversity.

Underpinning these challenges, there is scope to look at a wide range of organisational and business approaches: for example forms of employee mutualisation that directly involve the staff in college management, via employee trusts. Or colleges could establish or acquire a company or set up a trust in order to meet a specific need or deliver specific services, or participate in alliances such as federations or joint venture models to agree how collectively to meet the needs of learners and employers in their local communities.

All of this presents colleges with exciting opportunities to innovate and improve their provision in line with my vision for a reformed FE sector.

Conclusion

It has been an exciting year for FE and there is more excitement to come.

The contribution to building a better Britain that FE and skills is already making, and our plans to help you contribute even more are central to the Government’s mission.

Flagship policies for a flagship sector.

Growing FE, a growing economy and a growing society.

These three aims are inseparable and indispensable.

You and your fellow Principals and Governors, and how you frame your own unique offer, are at the heart of our ambitions for skills and the contributions they make to national growth.

Never has a Government believed as much in FE as I believe in you.

So fulfil my vision, our mission.

Renew our sector.

Renew our nation.

The speech made by John Hayes, the then Education Minister, on 15 June 2011.

Good afternoon everyone.

Parliamentary business has to take precedence in a democracy and so sadly I am unable to join you today. But I do want to take this opportunity to underline some crucial points that my able deputy, Susan Pember, will explain more fully later on.

My passionate belief in the value of careers guidance is well-known. I am convinced that, whatever the excellence of the courses on offer and the relevance to employers of the qualifications to which they lead, you cannot have a truly first-class skills system without a first-class advice and guidance service for learners. Careers guidance changes lives.

That why, first of all today, I want to thank you, to thank you for all you’ve done, all you do and for the future too. It’s going to be an exciting journey we travel together, the destination – the best of careers services.

Now, you will have seen the announcements on 13 April about careers guidance policy, reflecting my responsibilities across both the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Department for Education. So you know that under the Education Bill currently progressing through parliament, schools will have a new statutory duty to secure independent and impartial careers guidance. Whilst we are committed to freeing schools from bureaucracy, achieving the best career, work and life outcomes for all young people means having the right careers advice.

It is absolutely right that careers advice must be at the heart of what schools do. We will put into place measures that allow schools to secure the best possible advice in an independent way. I don’t say that schools havn’t done a good job up until now, many have. But guidance frankly has been patchy and too often advice on vocational options has been neglected. I’ve notified schools already that they need to prepare for this new statutory duty from this September and I can assure you that we will exemplify best practice, we will ask Ofsted to ensure that schools take this duty seriously at a management level and we will take further steps, if necessary, to secure that the right advice is given at the right time.

I believe that head teachers will take this duty very seriously. You know, we believe in trusting heads, governors and teachers to make the right judgments for their schools and there will not be a vanilla flavoured offer, different schools will take different paths that suit their students’ needs, but nevertheless the availability of independent careers advice in our schools is essential if all pupils are going to achieve their best.

I understand that a significant cultural change is required in moving from a model of central Government blanket support to one where the market plays a stronger role.

I know that, in that context, the service that’s provided will be tailored, tuned to the needs of different schools and different pupils.

It is important that schools are held to account for the quality of the services they secure and the impact they have on the progression of their pupils. So, for the first time, we will introduce a measure of how well pupils do when they leave school. These destination measures will be a vital way of assessing the effectiveness of the advice that people have received.

I want organisations which are part of the National Careers Service to provide information, advice and guidance of such quality that schools will commission their services.

Giving Schools responsibility is vital to driving up standards.

But the Service will do two vitally important things:

First, it will provide a visible public platform which champions the quality and professional standards which I think are crucial for the re-establishment of careers guidance as a true, respected profession.

Secondly, it will provide services which the market does not, or cannot currently provide. For young people, both in and out of school, there will be a helpline service and access to online information – we will continue to fund a high quality face to face guidance service in the community for adults. Provision of this guidance is crucial for adults because there is no routine institution that is responsible for their needs in this regard.

But, there is more. The main professional bodies for careers are, for the first time, working as a unified force for professional standards and common principles for guidance, there are now plans to achieve chartered status within three years. This is not a small step, but a giant leap. I wholeheartedly endorse everything they are doing to address the challenge in the most direct way.

The work that is being done by the profession, informed by the recommendations of Dame Ruth Silver which the government accept and driven by the efforts of Ruth Spelman, and others who are taking up this challenge is essential to delivering the best service in the world, which is what I want.

I have spoken before, I hope with passion, about the need to raise the status of careers guidance. I want the careers profession to return to a position of public recognition, prestige and value, where guidance is seen as an essential part of life and experience. It is too important for us to do anything other.

Connexions did good work and I know many of you were involved with Connexions, but its advice in terms of careers was often patchy. I think we ask too much of people to be professional careers advisors and to offer expert guidance on all kinds of other lifestyle issues.

That’s why we need a dedicated service.

And so we will develop a strong brand and identity for the National Careers Service, which will act as a beacon in the market, standing for excellence, widely recognised and valued by its customers.

I believe there is a great cause for optimism. We are on a clear path towards the vision that I set out.

The speech made by John Hayes, the then Education Minister, at Prospero House in London on 18 May 2011.

This speech is about recidivism. It’s about the frightening fact that 39 per cent of offenders re-offend. Countless extra crimes in every part of Britain. It’s about the £13 billion a year that costs the community. It’s about the broken lives of the parents, wives and children of those who go on breaking the law. And it’s about all the extra victims of those crimes. For all of them, things must change.

The poet of the Parisian underclass, Victor Hugo, wrote that “He who opens a school door, closes a prison”.

Perhaps that’s as true literally as he meant it metaphorically.

Education can certainly save people from ignorance, from want, from frustration and from a whole host of other obstacles that would otherwise stop them leading a truly fulfilled life. But there are also countless examples, of how education can rehabilitate those whose lives have already taken the wrong turning.

Just as in Hugo’s time, skills like those people can learn by taking an Apprenticeship can make the difference between a life on the right side of the law and a life trapped in the damaging cycle of reoffending and reimprisonment.

Of course, however hard we try, we will never manage to rehabilitate all prisoners successfully. But we are nonetheless entitled to ask why, despite all the money and effort that we put into prisoner education and other forms of rehabilitation, reconviction rates remain so high.

Like many of you, I watched the BBC’s recent documentary about The Clink prison restaurant. I was struck not only by what a great initiative this is, training young offenders – very much on the Apprenticeships model – for careers in the catering industry on release, but also by how well it exemplified some of the problems that bedevil our efforts to rehabilitate.

For every youngster who seized the second chance they were being offered, there were several who could not seem to bring themselves to do so.

If there were awards for most inspiring and most depressing television programme of the year, the story of The Clink would stand a good chance of winning both.

But those of us who believe in the power of learning to accomplish social and personal good are surely duty-bound to ensure that prisoner education contributes as much as it possibly can to helping those who come out of prison to stay out of prison. That, most think, means delivering what’s needed to get and keep a job.

Ensuring that even prisoners with very low skills, including the basics of literacy and numeracy needs, are shown a clear ladder of achievement to attain the skills they will need after release to hold down a job in the outside world.

That’s in their interest, in their potential victims’ interest; it’s in all our interest.

It also means ensuring that the skills towards which prisoners are guided are those employers need, especially in the localities into which they will be released.

In essence, this is what the strategy we are publishing today seeks to do. It emerges from a lengthy review process and I want to take this chance to thank everyone who has contributed to it, including many of you.

When you read it, you’ll see that some parts of the strategy address issues that are specific to prisoner education, such as the problems with disruption to learning that can occur when someone moves between prisons during their sentence. Others are familiar outside as well as in prisons.

These include the disillusionment and demotivation that learners can often feel if they work hard to acquire new skills which do not, in the end, help them to find a job.

I’ve no doubt that all of you will welcome some parts of the strategy. I’m equally certain that some of you will find others very challenging. But the thing that matters most is that we emerge with a system that fills those prisoners who are ready to be rehabilitated with enthusiasm for what learning and skills can do to help them. This is about changing lives by changing beliefs. What thousands of Britons who get on the wrong side of the law believe about themselves, their responsibilities, their duties, their futures.

Many of today’s prisoners are behind bars because they think, for them, only crime pays. No-one amongst the many people they have come across in their chaotic lives has set their feet on the ladder that climbs from basic and foundation skills upwards to the skills that could make them employable and bring them a decent life by lawful means.

That ignorance – that fear of failure – is the ultimate form of captivity.

In future, I want everyone who is released from prison to come out with the realistic opportunity to find a job that leads to an honest and productive life. This matters to all of us: because of the costs involved; because of the number of victims created; because of the number of lives ruined if we don’t do better. There is an ongoing tragedy of lost souls within those parts of our communities at the bedrock of Broken Britain. The cohesive societies which we all want to see can only be built by individuals, families and social networks enriched by purposeful pride.

Achieving what society deserves will take a lot more than money. But the first principle of our reform programme must be to ensure that what money we have goes where it is most needed and will do most good.

Which means finding new ways in which to organise how we deliver offender learning so that it has greatest effect and to ensure that this is mirrored more closely by the way we allocate resources.

For example, we will be trialling outcome incentive payments to give colleges and other providers a greater stake not just in delivering learning successfully, but that the learning goes on to have a positive impact on the prisoner.

We will also be prioritising forms of training like preparation for Apprenticeships that are known to deliver the best results for individual and are attractive to employers.

To help with that, we’re going to base the new structure on the clusters of prisons within which prisoners routinely move. That will go a long way towards addressing the problem of interrupted courses that I mentioned, as well as bringing more coherence to the system overall.

This reorganisation will make it necessary to re-procure offender learning contracts. I understand that this is a worrying development for some of you, and I can assure you that we gave it very careful thought.

The retendering process will allow us to strengthen the arrangements to assess prisoners’ prior attainment at the start of their sentences, ensuring that learning needs are met by the right training programmes. Our aim will be put in place arrangements that mean all prisoners are assessed using robust and consistent methods.

Equally importantly, this will ensure that prisoners with learning difficulties and disabilities are identified. That will allow their needs to be met by drawing together the dispersed funding that currently supports them to produce a fund that offers support to learners in a way that more closely matches what their peers in FE colleges would receive.

As a general rule, we will shift learning delivery towards the end of prisoners’ sentences, linking it firmly to the demand for skills in the labour markets into which prisoners will be released. At the same time, we will strengthen links with employers – again, the shared investment that employers and the Government make in training an apprentice can help here – as will employment support and the Department of Work and Pensions’ Work Programme.

Making all that work will need a lot of effort, a more intensive focus for training on labour market needs and closer relationships with prospective employers. We will need in particular to build stronger relationships between the Probation Service, Jobcentre Plus, colleges and independent training providers to ensure that the needs of offenders in the community are considered as business plans are developed.

I know that many British employers are every bit as far-sighted as the American Malcolm Forbes, who famously said that he cared not what an applicant to his company had done in the past, whether in Sing Sing prison or at Harvard, but what they could do in the future. The challenge is to make sure not only that released prisoners have something to offer prospective employers that shows that they could have a future with their businesses, but also, wherever possible, that a relationship with those employers has been established before release.

To complement these links, it will be important to make sure that the advice and guidance that prisoners approaching release receive is both realistic and relevant. So we will use the planned merger of the prison careers information and advice service into the National Careers Service to join up advice arrangements in and out of custody.

To increase the range and relevance of learning, we will also provide the skills training needed to support work opportunities in prison; And we will continue to provide an informal adult and community learning offer, including the arts, to support those who will be in prison for a long time, or for whom an immediate focus on work is unrealistic.

The primary focus of learning provision must be on quality, with those responsible for delivering the service and for its outcomes accountable to their local partners. The role of Heads of Learning and Skills in prisons will need to change to support this.

Clearly, prison Governors must also have a decisive role in shaping the skills offer in their establishments. In making these changes, we will encourage the engagement of charities, the private and voluntary sectors and social enterprises to make sure their capacity and expertise is utilised.

At present, our prisons are full to overflowing. And part of the reason for that is that for far too many offenders, the prison gates are a revolving door.

It may be that part of coming to terms with malevolence – a signpost of the journey back to virtue – is “to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments”. But there comes a point in almost any sentence when retribution must be tempered by rehabilitation.

Crime is not an ill to be treated, but the result of decisions to be lamented. Nevertheless, lamentation is fuelled by regret and regret feeds hope; the promise of something better. Release must hold a prospect that is sufficiently bright to make reoffending unattractive. For most prisoners, that means gaining the skills and support necessary to find and hold down a decent job.

Our strategy, some details of which I’ve described briefly this morning, is designed to accomplish that difference in outlook and expectation, leading to a determination to change life for the better … and to ensure that, for as many ex-offenders as possible, release is followed not by re-arrest, but by re-employment and reintegration into normal, law-abiding society.

I said at the start that this speech was about recidivism, about the costs of crime in terms of money and in terms of the damage to society. The changes we will introduce are tough and far-reaching. They are honest in intent and central to the battle against reoffending.

The plain, robust view that prisons should be workshops – and that, through the acquisition of skills, those there will become good citizens, should imbue all that we do.

With your help and support, I believe that ambition is within our grasp.

Thank you.

The statement made by John Hayes, the then Education Minister, at the Thistle Marble Arch Hotel in London on 9 March 2011.

Hello everyone. It’s a great pleasure for me to be here today.

I must begin by expressing thanks on behalf of us all to NIACE, Martin Yarnit Associates, the Workers’ Educational Association and Unionlearn for making today’s event possible and for their hard work and success in developing such a successful programme in just eighteen months.

I also want to recognise and thank the project leader, Liz Cousins, for her unwavering enthusiasm and determination in getting the project up and running and in supporting Community Learning Champions throughout.

The figures speak for themselves.

To date, nearly 2,000 Community Learning Champions have been registered.

Of these, 85 per cent are champions supported by development-funded schemes.

In addition, there are 285 registered Community Learning Champions from current schemes that have not been in receipt of a development fund grant, but have nevertheless signed up to the support programme.

Over the lifetime of the project, Community Learning Champions in development-funded projects have reached 100,000 learners and potential learners in their communities. Of those, well over 60 per cent were reached via a learning activity.

I’d like to pause for a moment over these facts. Statistics may be the gold that administrators mine from the grey, bureaucratic earth, but they don’t come close to reflecting the reality of what has been achieved. .

60,000 people whose lives have been touched by learning, made richer, more interesting and more fulfilled.

And let’s not forget the knock-on effects that so often flow from a person choosing learning – on children, family and friends.

We know that raising skills levels through formal training brings social as well as economic benefits – in the shape of better public health, lower crime-rates and more participation in the community activities that fuel the common good and power the national interest.

But informal learning also plays an important role within the wider learning continuum because it develops self-esteem and confidence and has a proven track record in transforming attitudes and abilities to prepare people for further learning or to play a fuller role in their communities.

Moreover, adult and community learning can make a real difference to people’s work prospects, particularly for those who’ve had very few chances in life or who come from the most deprived and excluded sections of society.

It takes place in accessible community venues and takes account of individuals’ needs and learning styles. It engages people through their interests. Without this kind of learning, many people would never get started in learning or realise their full potential.

2007 research from the Centre for the Wider Benefits of Learning found that informal learning provides a way back into formal, skills-based learning and more rewarding work for people with low skills and negative personal experiences of formal education.

These are all reasons why I personally and this Government collectively are huge supporters of informal adult and community learning.

We are passionate about its contribution to civil society, personal development and support for families.

And that is why we protected the £210 million Adult Safeguarded Learning budget for informal adult and community learning in the 2010 Comprehensive Spending Review.

The role of the Community Learning Champion in all this is vital. Learning Champions are not new, but having a national support programme is. Many Community Learning Champions have been working in isolation; now Government investment has given national coherence to local schemes, and raised their profile in communities across the country.

Community Learning Champions are involved in activities as diverse as encouraging clients to improve the environment by growing hanging baskets and planting flower troughs, showing friends that they are never too old to learn, setting up their own informal learning groups or reaching out to older people in ethnic minority communities who are isolated and lonely due to language barriers.

It is encouraging to see the diversity of people taking part in these schemes 10 per cent are Afro Caribbean, 3 per cent Bangladeshi , 5 per cent Indian and 5 per cent Pakistani.

In addition, 13 per cent of Community Learning Champions declared that they had a disability.

We are now embarking on a major reform programme, working closely with partners, to make sure that informal adult and community learning supports the Big Society, engages the most disadvantaged people in our communities and offers progression routes into further learning. We do not underestimate the impact that Community Learning Champions can have in their communities. Who else knows their community better than those who live within it?

Now that the funding for development projects is coming to an end, it will be important for both existing and new partners to consider how to build on their legacy and extend the availability of this important community resource. I know that there are important lessons here to be learned from many of the projects, and that the issue of finding local sponsors and other sources of financial support is a real one.

Over the coming months we will work closely with partners to consider how public funding can be refocused and reprioritised to guide and support the people who need the most help and have had the fewest opportunities.

This is in tune with our ambition to give citizens and communities the power and information to come together and build a bigger and stronger society, actively involving all the families, networks and neighbourhoods that form the fabric of our everyday lives.

The Big Society is a place where people, neighbourhoods and communities have more power and responsibility and use it to create better services. Community Learning Champions are becoming established as part of that Big Society.

We have seen how this approach works.

We look to you in this audience today and many more out there like you to help us take this forward.

Thank you.